The best and worst paying states for public employees

The best and worst paying states for public employees

Love it or hate it, the United States government is a major player in our economy. With 2.7 million employees on its payroll, the U.S. federal government is the single largest employer in the world while over 20 million people, or about 11 percent of the total labor force, are employed by the public sector at the local, state, or federal levels.

Using the 2016 Annual Survey of Public Employment & Payroll, we discovered which states had the best- and worst-paid state and local government employees (federal employees were not surveyed). The survey provides the total amount of money paid out to public employees in March 2016. Dividing the total March Payroll by the number of full-time public employees yields the average monthly salary.

For each state, we've included the industries within state and local employment that rank best and worst for monthly pay. The education sector revealed a disparity: higher education came in highest across 36 states while elementary and secondary school employees were the worst paid in forty-one states.

We begin our list with the states with the lowest average monthly salary for public employees and work our way to the state where state and local employees receive the highest pay. Click through to see the whole thing.